Bread grinder: a real misfortune for products

Bugs started up in the groats - such news will upset any housewife, because even the fact that insects and their larvae are in the products is unpleasant. And the chores associated with getting rid of them increase the negative effect of the news. One of these pests is a bread grinder.

Description of the bread grinder

In appearance, they are small to three millimeters of brown bug. Their body is covered with thick short yellowish hairs. These bugs have wings and can fly. The bread grinder lives in the kitchen and is a dangerous pest of food products. Moreover, the damage is caused both by adults, making through holes in the products, and their larvae, devouring everything in its path.
These insects are attracted to bread products, cereals, sugar, confectionery, dried fruits, coffee, tea, spices, dried herbs, pet food, and they can also be found in herbaria, stuffed animals and birds. “Gluttonous guests” often get into the apartment with purchased products, less often through window slots or a window leaf.

It is interesting! The bread grinder beetle does not touch the wood, so when it is found in the house, you can not worry only about the state of furniture, floors and walls.

With a small number of insects, they are invisible, and we may not suspect that the products are infected, but when there are many of them, they begin to crawl out onto the walls, the floor, and you can often see bugs on the windowsill. It is important to understand that if insects are often found at home, it means that somewhere there are too many of them. Most likely they breed in some secluded place for several months. And as their numbers grow, some of the adults go in search of new soil for laying eggs.

A warning! Products contaminated with a bread grinder cannot be eaten, as they are filled with waste products and can cause eating disorder, allergies and even poisoning of humans and animals! If you are completely sorry to throw it out, you can feed them to the birds, for them they are not harmful.

Propagation Features

Each female lays up to 140 eggs in products, which subsequently become the object of food for her offspring. Dirty white worms with short spikes on their backs and no more than five millimeters in length are the larvae of the beetle grinder. They have well-developed upper jaws, which are covered with teeth. The development time depends on the ambient temperature, the higher it is, the faster it passes, and ranges from four to one hundred days. Then the larva pupates in the kitchen supplies, constructing a cocoon of grocery microparticles around it, or gnawing a cradle in cereal grains. Adults do not eat, but survive due to the fat reserves that they accumulated as a larva, but gnaw through the products in the products to get out for further reproduction.

Important! Despite the fact that the bread grinder belongs to heat-loving insects, its larvae are also resistant to low temperatures, even at five degrees below zero the embryo in the egg remains viable for up to four months.

Destruction of grinder beetles and their larvae

In order to understand how to get rid of a bread grinder, it is important to know that this is not an insect that, like a cockroach, can easily move from one place of the kitchen to another in search of food, and spends daytime in places far from the feed. If the bug finds a new product that is suitable for its offspring, it will be in it constantly, attracting the smell of females for mating. It follows that, first of all, it is necessary to find a breeding ground for insects and eliminate it.

First, you need to check all the groceries in the house. To detect insects, each product must be carefully examined. With pest damage, inside can be trash, small holes, and the bugs themselves and their larvae in the breeding center are clearly visible. You must also carefully examine all the places in the apartment, as the larvae can develop anywhere, for example, in a fertilizer for plants, in a long-forgotten bag with groats or mint, in flowers and leaves brought from the street by children.

The search for such a source is the most difficult stage and the overall effectiveness of your efforts depends on how responsibly you approach it, because if several individuals remain somewhere, then after a while they will again greatly breed and you will have to start again again. Then everything is a little easier.

All products in which bread grinders are found must be thrown into the sewer or into the street. The single bugs that you saw outside the food must be crushed.

If the products are slightly infected, you can take the following measures:

• sift the cereal through a very fine sieve, and then heat it in the oven at a temperature of 70 degrees, remember that it is impossible to heat the flour;
• legumes can be poured with saline, after the insects emerge, dry well on a clean cotton cloth;
• hold the food for 24 hours in a freezer, then fry at an average temperature for 10-15 minutes.

After measures to throw away or save food products, a number of actions should be taken to completely destroy the parasite:

• shift the surviving products into containers with tight-fitting lids; before that, it is better to keep them in the freezer for prevention for a day;
• rinse all cabinets in which products with water are added with the addition of acetic acid;
• wash floors and skirting boards with water and bleach;
• if the bugs were found in glass containers, then they must be soaked in soapy water, then thoroughly washed and dried;
• scald with boiling water various cracks in the floor and accessories of cabinets;
• holes in wooden elements through which pests can crawl, it is desirable to seal up with sealant.

Do you need chemicals to combat the bread grinder

In the case of this pest, there is no need to use chemical insecticides for its extermination at home, because:

• if you can’t process the products with chemicals, you still can’t eat them later, so it’s more advisable to throw them away immediately;
• the products are stored in packages, and the beetles and their larvae dig deeper, so if you process a cabinet or shelf in the kitchen, the product will not penetrate the infected product and will not poison them;
• aerosols are designed to exterminate insects over large areas, and bread grinders, as a rule, concentrate in a small center, it is much easier to find beetles and throw out products;
• the use of such tools is unsafe for the processor.

Measures to prevent the appearance of a bread grinder

After measures are taken to remove the grinder, you must:

• store bulk products in sealed containers with screw caps, throw out paper bags and cardboard boxes that the larvae willingly eat;
• Do not keep large stocks at home, but buy only the necessary quantity for a week;
• stop buying the cheapest and specialty groceries;
• it is good to inspect products before buying for the presence of dust, cocoons, beetles and their larvae;
• After purchase, before pouring the products into containers, it is necessary to rinse and dry in the oven;
• another option is to hold the purchased groceries for a day in the freezer;
• Once a month, carefully review everything that is stored in kitchen cabinets;
• store dried fruits, bread and nuts in the refrigerator;
• monitor the dryness of sinks and tables in the kitchen, since insects need to be drunk;
• close up the ventilation holes in the apartment with a fine mesh;
• Do not leave dirty dishes for a long time;
• After eating, immediately remove the remaining food in the refrigerator;
• Maintain cleanliness in the kitchen and in the home.

So be careful, because it is easy to enter such a pest, but it can be problematic to remove them.

Folk remedies

Folk recipes for getting rid of a bread grinder:

• In the pharmacy, you can buy pyrethrum powder, mix with water and rinse the cabinets once a week until the insects completely disappear.
• To control pests, a borax is used, from which special balls can be prepared by taking powdered sugar and millet as additional ingredients. Millet must be ground in a coffee grinder. Mix all the components in equal proportions and make balls out of them, which are then laid out in the corners of the kitchen furniture, periodically changing to fresh ones.
• Another recipe: take dry yeast, sugar, borax. Finely grind the components, sprinkle them on sheets of paper and place them in those places in the kitchen where annoying insects have settled. As practice shows, in a short time the pests will disappear.

These methods are not only effective, but also safe, because borax formulations are not harmful to humans and pets.

There are also many alternative methods for preventing the appearance of small pests:

• if the cereal is stored in canvas bags, then they must first be boiled for half an hour in a strong saline solution, when they are dry, ironed;
• in the flour, you can put several unpeeled cloves of garlic, its pungent smell will scare away insects;
• in a container with cereals and in the corners of the cabinets place gauze bags of salt, or bay leaf, citrus peels, lavender, nutmeg, bread grinders do not tolerate these smells;
• Periodically wash the shelves of the cabinets with vinegar;
• in storage places for cereals and flour, place cotton pads with aromatic oils of geranium, rosemary, cloves, basil or fir;
• put in the kitchen furniture sprigs of wormwood or fresh walnut leaves.

Insects in the kitchen is not a sentence. Withdrawing them is difficult, but possible. Using some simple tips, you can forever forget about such a misfortune as kitchen bugs.